Conciseness was of course necessary when it is recollected that the paper was only a folio half-sheet, though the news was so scanty that the few advertisements were a boon to the reader, and were sure to be read. This was an advantage peculiar to the early advertisers. So long as the papers were small, and the advertisements few in number, the trade announcements were almost more interesting than the news. But when the papers increased in bulk, and advertisements became common, it behoved those who wished to attract special attention to resort to contrivances which would distinguish them from the surrounding crowd of competitors. The editor of the _London Mercury_, in 1681, evidently with an eye to making his paper a property on the best of all principles, requests all those who have houses for sale to advertise in his columns, “where,” says he, “farther care will be taken for their disposal than the bare publishing them, by persons who make it their business.” Consequently we frequently meet in this paper with notices of “A delicate House to lett,” agreeably varied with advertisements concerning spruce beer, scurvy grass, Daffy’s elixir, and other specifics. Notwithstanding that the utility of advertising as a means of obtaining publicity was as yet hardly understood, the form of an advertisement, according to modern plans, was, it is curious to observe, frequently adopted at this period to expose sentiments in a veiled manner, or to call attention to public grievances. Thus, for instance, the first numbers of the _Heraclitus Ridens_, published in 1681, during the effervescence of the Popish plots, contained almost daily one or more of these political satires, of which the following may serve as examples. The first appears February 4. IF any person out of natural curiosity desire to be furnished with ships or castles in the air, or any sorts of prodigies, apparitions, or strange sights, the better to fright people out of their senses, and by persuading them there are strange judgments, changes, and revolutions hanging over their heads, thereby to persuade them to pull them down by discontents, fears, jealousies, and seditions; let them repair to Ben Harris, at his shop near the Royal Exchange, where they may be furnished with all sorts and sizes of them, at very cheap and easy rates. There is also to be seen the strange egg with the comet in it which was laid at Rome, but sent from his Holiness to the said Ben, to make reparations for his damages sustained, and as a mark of esteem for his zeal and sufferings in promoting discord among the English hereticks, and sowing the seeds of sedition among the citizens of London. The edition of February 15 contains the following:--